One of the players told me and I have no reason to doubt him either. Its the " old boys network " at Headingley , headed up,of course, by the prophet JJB

I imagine it's more likely they will beat London, possibly less convincingly than might be expected, and then come up with a pair of creditable performances after that. Assuming the team has a few players back from injury anyway.

It's not a unique phenomenon but Smith's teams really do perform much better when they are underdogs.

He got soft-soaped on that presser for the large majority of it.

He really needs putting under some better scrutiny because some of those answers were giving off major "Jesse Marsch Vibes"
This is RL and I suppose you dont want to be blacklisted from stuff I suppose but I found myself shaking my head at some of the "answers" he put forth to questions.

The nature of being underdogs is that you generally need to be not winning and playing poorly to get the moniker.

Some of the best GF winning Leeds teams have been underdogs - in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012 etc - what's your point Flexwheeler? You do realise that good teams are not always expected to win, right?

The revisionism on this forum in the last few weeks really has been epic. We've been hearing that Furner would have been a better coach than Smith if only JJB hadn't complained and got GH and Sinfield to cut short his tenure, and now being an underdog is a sign of a team playing poorly. Jesus wept.

Which player told you ?

Beware the Troll , you talk sh##

what's epic is people watching this garbage for 18 months and thinking smith is the answer

They were underdogs in one-off grand finals but on a week in week out basis they were favourites for a large portion of games. Guess who will be underdogs a lot this season? London and Hull, because they’re crap.

Your comparison is irrelevant, invalid, and frankly damn unhelpful as people continue to make comparison with yesteryear.

If you total up how many times Leeds went into a weekly round fixture during years they won the grand final as favourites and take an average, then take the same from Smith’s 18 months, guess what?

They’ll be underdogs higher percentage of the time under smith because they play poorly and lose, often. That was my point, you get the moniker of being underdogs by being crap, to put it bluntly.

Nice back-pedalling, but it doesn't disguise the fact that your definition of underdogs was deliberately narrowed to suit your anti-Smith agenda.

I'm not sure your hypothetical scenario is going to be as revealing as you think (I suspect neither of us has the time to quantify, but please do indulge yourself). In 2022 when Smith took over, Leeds were rightly underdogs in a lot of games, but we ended winning a lot more than was expected. In 2023 we actually started as favourites in a lot of games in the first part of the season because we had made the GF - many of which we lost, but not all. Your original comment about underdogs wasn't really as clever as you thought it was, and it's not really helpful to understanding what's going on at the club.

I will continue to bring up the past where it is relevant. Especially when it helps educate impatient doom-merchants that are turning people away from reading and contributing to this forum.

No I don't , meanwhile you Foxtrot Oscar

That’s quite a grandiose claim about your educational potential. I find your comments interesting on this forum, can’t say I’ve ever found them educational. Yours is an opinion, just like everyone else’s, and that’s what makes the forum an interesting place. If I wanted to be educated I’d go to a fact based website, but I already know how many trophies we’ve won, which players won those trophies etc, etc. As for understanding what’s going on at the club, you will never really understand, so it’s pointless chastising someone else when you are no better placed to do so. I’m sure Rohan Smith doesn’t fully understand why it’s gone wrong this season, he will have some aspects under his control, but doesn’t seem to grasp or understand the bigger picture. I look forward to more of your opinions.

Your assumption here is that Smith can’t grasp what you can grasp though?

At the end of the day, everyone who works for Leeds for their living and isn’t just an amateur player who never made it or another sort of speccie - they know more about the game and about the club than any of us.

I actually don’t agree that all opinions are equal by the way, but the curse of social media etc is that people just polarise and it feeds reactionary behaviour.

There is a lack of respect for expertise and experience these days - and respect for the fact that pretty much everyone, like you, is just trying to carry their own crosses.

This isn’t to give RS a free pass but some of the arguments against him on here are paper thin. Heard on the world famous podcast about how much JOC has developed over 2 years. Credit given to various players for that. Hm hmmm.

I said before the season started that the Smith situation would be assessed after 10-12 games.
It's interesting after 10 games.
The performances in the main have been very poor - and are a big cause for concern.
But the fact is that we have won 6 games and are 2 points off the leading pack.
We will probably lose the next 2, but then have 4 very winnable games.
Let's assess after those 6 games.
We could be in the mix, we could be in the bottom 4.

FWIW, there is no point sacking Smith mid-season, regardless of where we are.
But if we continue with the dour performances I think we should be looking to change at the end of the season.
The biggest thing that needs to change is the manner of the performances.
We look unstructured, disorganised, lacking leadership and just badly coached.
But we are low on confidence.
A few wins could turn that round.
Defeats will sharpen the knives.